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Washington County, Oregon is a visual history of Washington County with over 200 black and white images. Each image has a brief, informative, and accurate caption of approximately 40-100 words. The book has 9 chapters and covers timeframe of 1840s through 1960s with emphasis on turn of the last century.

Arthur Sommers was born and raised in northern California, and earned a B.A. in History 1972 from San Francisco State College. Enlisted in Navy 1972-1976. Federal Government Civil Servant from 1978-1999. Many different jobs as civilian employee with the U.S. Air Force. Collects old photographs and uses them in visual histories of Placer County, California and now Washington County, Oregon. Living in Hillsboro, Oregon 2015-2019. Has also published three volumes of family history.

Recently divorced Tara Spencer is a devoted single mom to her eleven-year-old daughter and is still healing from her failed marriage of fourteen years. As she embarks on an exciting new career, the last thing she needs is a man in her life. Then she meets the alluring Dr. Geoffrey Jensen, a bedazzling psychotherapist who isn’t what he seems. Adept at manipulation, Geoffrey toys with Tara’s mind, compelling her to change for him. When she discovers his shocking secret, will she find the courage to get out in time or will it be too late?

Tasche Laine has worked as a journalist, newspaper columnist, teacher, and studio teacher to child actors in Hollywood. She has authored two novels: the 2018 International Book Award winner for Readers’ Favorite, CLOSURE: based on a true story, and its newly released sequel, CHAMELEON. She grew up in the small town of Sherwood, Oregon, then felt the need to explore the world. She has lived all over the U.S. but was inevitably drawn back to the beautiful Pacific Northwest. She now resides in Vancouver, Washington, where she’s attempting to help plan her daughter’s wedding from a thousand miles away. Thank goodness for FaceTime and free long distance!

AS DIRECTED: In the shadow of a past fraught with danger and tainted by loss, former pharmaceutical researcher Maggie O’Malley is rebuilding her life, trading test tubes for pill bottles as she embarks on a new career at the corner drugstore. But as she spreads her wings, things begin to go terribly wrong. A customer falls ill in the store. Followed by another. And then more. The specter of poisoning arises, conjuring old grudges, past sins, buried secrets and new suspicions from which no one is immune. As Maggie and her best friend Constantine begin to investigate, they discover that some of the deadliest doses come from the most unexpected places.

Kathleen Valenti is the author of the Maggie O’Malley Mystery Series, which includes her Agatha- and Lefty-nominated debut novel, Protocol. When Kathleen isn’t writing page-turning mysteries that combine humor and suspense, she works as a nationally award-winning advertising copywriter. She lives in Oregon with her family where she pretends to enjoy running. Learn more at www.kathleenvalenti.com.

Running Off Radar: Covert operator Maji Rios’s best friend was right: she was an idiot to break up with Professor Rose diStephano, even for the best reasons. When Rose offers her a week of R&R in Sitka, Alaska, she’s ready to let Rose decide if a relationship is worth the danger. But her plans to win Rose back are interrupted when work intrudes and duty calls Maji to help a SEAL team stop a Russian Mobster from harvesting gold from the bottom of Sitka Sound.

MB Austin is a mild-mannered civil servant by day, who plays with real people in the dojo and imaginary ones in her stories. She lives with her fabulous wife in Seattle, an excellent town for coffee-fueled writers who don’t need too much sun.

Worth the Wait: For fifteen years, Avery Crown tried to forget her best friend Merritt Lessing. The late nights studying, the whispered confidences, and the little touches that never turned into something more. Unfortunately, her efforts have not been as successful as her TV career as the queen of home renovation. So when she runs into Merritt at their high school reunion, Avery asks for one night with the woman she’s always wanted.

Merritt spent high school pining after Avery, but never made a move. Their friendship meant too much. The one time it seemed things might change, Avery chose her budding career. So Merritt did the same, throwing herself into her remodeling business. Now Avery is back, and while Merritt still hasn’t forgiven her for walking away the first time, they cant keep their hands off each other. But when their professional paths cross, and it seems like Avery is choosing her career once again, Merritt will have to decide if she’s willing to let go of the past and give herself a second chance with her first love.

Karelia Stetz-Waters remembers a time when romantic love was a holy grail she thought she would never find. Stories about lesbians all ended tragically. At seventeen, she was certain the best she could hope for was to die nobly for the woman she loved (who would never love her back, of course). Four years later, she saw her true love across a crowded room, and they have been together for twenty years. Knowing that happily-ever-after is possible for everyone, Stetz-Waters has made it her life’s mission to craft happy endings for women who love other women. She is also on a quest to spread “cliteracy” across the country, using her work as a romance writer to teach readers about female sexual anatomy, desire, and pleasure.

Karelia writes the Out in Portland series for Forever Yours at Grand Central. Her romance novels include Worth the Wait, For Good, and Something True. Other works include The Admirer, The Purveyor, and Lambda Literary Award finalist Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before. She has a Masters in English and teaches writing at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon.

Join us for a reading from the third book in Jeff Stookey’s Medicine For the Blues trilogy. Dangerous Medicine follows Carl Holman’s struggles as his standing with the prestigious clinic where he works is strained to the breaking point by pressures from the Ku Klux Klan, societal expectations to marry and have children, and other forces beyond his control. As his compassion compels him to treat unorthodox cases, involving addiction, birth control, and child abuse, he is pushed to make increasingly difficult decisions about his professional and domestic affairs. Can Carl and those he loves find a way to live authentic lives in this hostile world?

“Jeff Stookey’s engaging novel is a brilliantly written story set in the tough Prohibition era. An excellent contribution to the history of our city, the book is also a page-turner. I had to know what happened next.”
—Don DuPay, author of Behind the Badge in River City

Growing up in a small town in rural Washington State, Jeff Stookey enjoyed writing stories. He studied literature, history, and cinema at Occidental College, and then got a BFA in Theater from Fort Wright College. In his 40s he retrained in the medical field and worked for many years with pathologists, trauma surgeons, and emergency room reports.

Jeff lives in Portland, OR, with his longtime partner, Ken, and their unruly garden.

Join us for readings by three authors from the same publishing house, the first in a new monthly series.

The tales in John H. Fitchen’s Life Through the Lens of a Doctor-Birder are about two grand passions: medicine and birds. Through the eyes of a physician and a birder, we witness the glory that is nature. From a remote Aleutian Island to his own backyard, and from the research lab to the bedside, we see what makes birders tick and doctors marvel.

Ingrid Kincaid’s The Runes Revealed will challenge you to remove the tainted, distorted lens of patriarchal interpretation and start seeing the runes with clearer vision. Long before Odin, the Vikings or Christianity, the runes were. Written in a style that’s a mixture of both prose and poetry, this unconventional book about the runes presents a perspective that is challenging, thought-provoking and controversial.

In Jim Nail’s The Ballad of Johnny Arcane: A Novel, seven summers pass without a champion climbing the silo to claim the Cornfest Prize. Enter young Johnny Arcane, who brings down the hive of bees, the townspeople hefting him onto their shoulders, crying, “Arcane! Arcane!” The legend of Johnny Arcane is born, a saga of a reluctant hero on an epic journey, from his glory at Cornfest, through his shame at the Dolmens, to his most perilous quest-to cross the border between the known and the unknown worlds.

John H. Fitchen, MD, is an Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. After nearly twenty years in academics, he accepted a leadership role at Epitope, Inc., the Portland-based biotech company that developed OraSure, the first and only oral HIV test. He has published articles in The Atlantic, Birding, the New England Journal of Medicine, and dozens of other peer-reviewed medical journals. He is an avid birder and lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Ellen.

Ingrid Kincaid is the daughter of Arctic glaciers, rocky shorelines and windswept moors. She was born knowing the runes. They’re etched in her bones. They’re her lineage, her ancestry, her bloodlines. Their wisdom informs all that she does. People in the community know her as the rune woman. The Runes Revealed is a companion text to an online course of the same name. Visit her website to discover all that she have to offer: classes, rituals, online courses and private, spiritual guidance.

The Ballad of Johnny Arcane started with a song Jim Nail composed in 1973. The song stuck in his mind until, decades later, it exploded into a full novel. Nail is a songwriter, author, father, husband. He lives in Oregon with his wife and fellow author, Claire. They have two grown sons, Brendan and Devin.

It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Tales from the Crypt in this wildly satirical collection of short stories by Charles Austin Muir. There are chaos magic spells, killer rabbits, kung fu sorcerers, mystical brothels, mutant slasher villains and vampires afoot at the public library. This is a Horror Book is an absurdist’s dark literary ride through the unreal with mind-bending revelations at every stop.

Charles Austin Muir is the author of This is a Horror Book and Bodybuilding Spider Rangers and Other Stories. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies including Peel Back the Skin and The Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. He was an obituary writer, humor writer and fitness writer for The Oregonian. He has also written humorous articles on exercise including “Air Guitar: The Dumbest Workout You Should be Doing” and “The Michael Myers Killer Workout.” He currently works as a rehabilitative exercise trainer at a chiropractic clinic. He lives with his wife, who is a retired air guitarist, three pugs and a pit lab in the weird city of Portland, Oregon.

Three women’s lives interweave as they struggle to navigate life and love. And the effects of a meteorite.

Patricia Steitz, a successful romance writer, is flabbergasted when Rudi Singlewood shows up at one of her book signings and initiates a summer romance. She worries that the fantasies she’s harbored regarding the world-renown Broadway actress may prevent her from accepting who Rudi really is. She relates her fears to her best friend, Marcia Struthers, a successful Manhattan litigator.

Knowing that Patricia has dreamed of Rudi for years, Marcia urges her to give the actress a chance by getting to know who she is behind her public persona. While working a high-profile case, Marcia must confront her resurging feelings for lead opposing counsel, Lexie Yamin, and the appearance of an unrequited love. All is not as it seems, however, as Marcia deals with unexpected physical changes and developing mental abilities after an encounter with a meteorite. Marcia’s not the only one dealing with changes induced by an extraterrestrial rock, though.

Kiernan Connelly, who has received intriguing letters over several months, begins to question her lifestyle. Her casual sexual relationship with Rudi and passable acting career no longer fulfill her. As Kiernan makes changes in her life, she finds herself dealing with the strange reality of being able to hear others’ thoughts. Could it be related to her close encounter with a meteorite?

Jazzy Mitchell loves to tell stories, whether in the classroom or on paper. She taught English in the public schools of her hometown for a decade, giving back to the system which helped her so much. Her debut novel, Lost Treasures, received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Rainbow Awards and was nominated in three categories for GCLS’s 2017 Goldie Awards: Debut Author, Traditional Contemporary Romance, and Cover Design. Besides writing, Jazzy teaches real estate law, writes fanfiction as Jazwriter, and facilitates energy work through her business, the Lightarian Institute. Jazzy lives in Portland, Oregon, enjoying life with her wife, three children, and two dogs.

Join us in welcoming Riya Anne Polcastro as she reads from her novel, Jane.

Somewhere out there is a line in the sand between sanity and insanity. Jane searches that line out, toys with it, revels in it, and then takes a running leap right over it.

Sex, drugs, and gangster rap come together in this deliciously transgressive novel to show you a side of crazy you never knew you wanted to see.

When twenty-five year old Jane moves back to her hometown in order to care for her schizophrenic aunt, miscarriage and an unfaithful fiancé fresh in her mind, the seeds are ripe for her mother’s cruel words to come true:

“You’re going to end up just like your aunt. You’re going to end up in a mental hospital someday.”

Caught between the secrets lurking below the surface of such childhood traumas and Aunt Rose’s demons―soon Jane is in desperate need of an escape. She find it in The Circle, a mismatched group of twenty-somethings who wave their amateur psychiatric diagnoses like badges of honor and party until the sun comes up. Little does she know, her new friends will be the source of her inevitable unravelling.

Armed with a useless liberal arts degree, Riya Anne Polcastro is a student of human behavior and a conduit for raw words. Maybe it is because she learned to read and write in her second language before she learned to do the same in her first. Maybe it is because she was raised a missionary’s daughter at the same time that she was taught to question everything. Maybe there are a whole lot of reasons. Either way, her fascination with mental illness and human interaction is weaved into fiction with a language that is at times caressed and loved, at others beaten into submission.

Join us in welcoming Jeffrey Michael Tinkham for a reading from his book, Talk Show: At the pinnacle of his career, Teddy Baxter, America’s favorite Late Night TV Talk Show host, is stricken with an ailment perhaps not altogether terrestrial in nature.

Jeffrey Michael Tinkham holds a BA in English from the University of Rochester, and is co-owner of Talking Oak Studios in Silverton Oregon. He lives in Silverton Oregon with his wife, Carole Ann DeMar ( co-owner of Talking Oak Studios) and their two cats, Mr. Mojo & Captain Fantastic.